The Great War

1
The Great War

• War and Society, 1914-1920

2
Study Guide Identifications

• 14 points
• Peace without Victory
• League of Nations
• Imperial Competition
• American neutrality
• Factors that led to US entering war
• U-boats
• Trench Warfare

3
Study Guide Questions

•  Why did the US become involved in WWI?
• What problems did the US encounter as it sought
  to mobilize its people, and economy for war?
• How were they overcome?
• What were Woodrow Wilsons peace proposals and
  how did they fare?

4
Origins of Conflict

• Since 1870s
• Competing imperial ambitions of the great
  European powers
• Economic rivalries
• Military expansion
• Diplomatic maneuvering
• International tensions

5

• May 1914, an American diplomat reported, there
  is too much hatred, too much jealousies, he
  predicted an awful Cataclysm

6
Entente Central Powers

• Entente Powers
• Led by France, Russia, Britain
• Later Italy (1915) and the United States (1917)
• Central Powers
• Austro-Hungarian
• German
• Ottoman Empire

7
Inevitable War

• Began between Serbia and Austro-Hungary
• Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke
  Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne
• Austria declared war on Serbia in 1914
• World powers promised to come to each others aid
  if attacked
• 2 hostile groups

8
Dominos

• Russia was obligated by a treaty to defend Serbia
  if attacked by the Austria-Hungary Empire
• Alliance System
• Alliances a factor in powers joining WWI

9
Imperial Rivalry

• Greater Factors in rise of WWI - competition
• Economic rivalries
• Military Expansion
• Diplomatic maneuvering  
• International tensions
• Britain and Germany - struggle for world
  supremacy
• Myth of the swift and decisive war

10
Unprecedented Warfare

• Victory Not Swift
• Two camps evenly matched
• New technologies and methods of warfare  
• Tanks
• trench warfare
• rat infested disease
• airplanes
• barbed wire
•  

11
Myth of Victorious War

• In the first 3 months of the war
• (August 1914) the original British army was
  wiped out.
• The British press
• Impression of victory
• German press
• All quiet on the western front.
• 1917 the French military
• Mutinies

12
Devastation Carnage

• 8.5 million soldiers died, with 17 million
  wounded
• total casualties military and civilian reached 37
  million.
• Europe lost an entire generation of young men,
  leaving behind an entire nation of young widows.

13
American Neutrality

• Woodrow Wilson - Europes war
• No threat to vital American interests
• Wilson effort to seek peace
• Normal trade relationships with both.
•  

14
Roosevelts Pro-war Camp

• War was inevitable
• German Expansion needed to be checked
• Majority agreed with Wilson.

15
Factors of Americas entering into War

• Strong economic ties with Britain
• 800 million dollars a year in exports
• 170 million to Germany and Austria-Hungary
• Shared culture and language
• Economic Boom for the United states in providing
  food, clothing and war supplies and equipment to
  France and Britain
• American business and investors had a direct
  stake in an Allied victory

16
Critical Perspectives

• Anti-Imperialist and Socialist Imperialist war
• advanced capitalist countries of Europe were
  fighting over boundaries, colonies, spheres of
  influence
• Alsace-Lorraine, The Balkans, Africa and the
  middle east.
• Imperialist Economic necessity
• 1914 recession in the U.S.
• business depressed, farm prices deflated,
  employment serious,

17
War Profits

• 1915 war orders for the allies stimulated the
  economy
• by April 1917 more than 2 billion worth of goods
  had been sold to the allies. Prosperity depended
  on foreign markets
• 1897 700 Million in exports
• by 1914 3 ½ billion in exports
• Even secretary of State, an anti-imperialist
  William Jennings Bryan advocated the righteous
  conquest of foreign markets.

18
Interest in an Allied victory

• JP Morgan and Allies
• lent money at great amounts to make a profit and
  tie American finance closely to the interest of a
  British victory.
• (Was the prosperity classless, who benefited?)

19
Factors Continued

• 4. British Blockade on German Ports (attempt to
  starve Germans into submission)
• America did not challenge its right to trade with
  Germany
• Violated American neutrality
• protested the blockade, created a recession in
  the US.
• U-boat or submarine warfare
• Combat British control of the seas
• Flow of US goods to the allies. 

20
Lusitania

• Significance of the sinking of the Lusitania
• Brought public opinion in line with government
  action
• People supported a war they collectively did not
  previously

21
Germanys Escalation of Aggression

• Beginning in 1918, Germanys aggression against
  the allies began to escalate
• United States entered into the war to reinforce
  British lines
• Allied powers won
• Germany asked for an armistice to be followed by
  peace negotiations based on Wilsons 14 points

22
Wilsons 14 points

• Peace without victory campaign won him
  re-election in 1916.
• Culminated 14 points policy
• Proposed a new world order
• All nations, weak and powerful, could participate
  as equals in the world.

23
Paris Peace Conference

• Wilson led the American delegation of the Paris
  Peace Conference
• 14 points
• Code of conduct that embraced free trade, freedom
  of the seas, open diplomacy, disarmaments, and
  resolution of disputes through mediation  

24
League of Nations

• function as an international parliament and
  judiciary
• establish rules of international behavior
• resolve disputes between nations through rational
  and peaceful means
• nine member executive council
• power to punish aggressor nations through
  economic isolation and military retaliation
• Due to opposition, congress failed to ratify the
  treaty

25
The Big Three

• Conference controlled by
• Wilson
• David Lloyd George of Britain
• Georges Clemenceau of France
• France and Britain refused to include most of the
  14 points into the peace treaty. They wanted to
  punish Germany.

26
Treaty of Versailles (1919)

• Awarded portions of Germany to Denmark, Poland
  and Czechoslovakia
• disarmed Germany (all but 100,000)
• forced admission of responsibility for the war
• reparations of 33 billion dollars

27
Consequences of World War One
League of Nations Great Britain France Right
to rule former territories as mandates Rule in
interests of the people, not as colonies German
Territories in Africa Ottoman Turkish lands in
the Middle East
28
A Mandates

• Middle East
• Almost ready for independence
• Advanced politically and economically enough for
  provisional independence to be granted
• Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon
• Balfour declaration creation of Israel

29
B MandatesNeeded Several generations of
tutelage
Togoland (French West Africa) Kamerun (French
British mandates) German East Africa (British
Tanganyika, Rwanda, Burundi)
30
C mandates To Britain

• Pacific unprepared for independence in the
  foreseeable future
• Nambia given class C mandate to the Union of
  South Africa in 1922
• New Guinea mandated to Australia
• Western Samoa to New Zealand
• North- Western Pacific Isand to Japan

31
War on the Home FrontID/Terms

• CPI 1917 campaign
• CPI 1918 Campaign
• War Time Repression
• IQ test
• Liberty Bonds
• Trading with the Enemy Act
• Anti-German Campaign
• Anti-radical Crusades
• Flappers
• Nativism Xenophobia

32
Total War

• Scale of men needed, preparations heavily taxed
  the United States in every way.
• First conscription law passed to raise a multi
  million man army
• Agricultural, transportation, industrial and
  human resources all devoted to war effort.
•  

33
How to Organize War Time Economy?

• Southern and Midwestern democrats
• feared centralization of government authority
• Northeastern progressives
• strong state to regulate the economy, boost
  efficiency and achieve social harmony.

34
Organized industry

• Centralized federal agencies
• food administrations
• Private transportation shifted to public control
• Rail Roads
• unified system to move supplies and troops
  efficiently
• centralized management eliminated competition,
• permitted improvements in equipment,
• brought great profits to the owners
• higher prices to the general public.

35
War Industries Board

• Further empowered corporations responsible for
  mobilizing supplies
• led by Bernard Baruch who aimed for
  business-government integration
• promoted major business interests
• helped suspend anti-trust laws
• guaranteed huge corporate profits.
• (industrialists charged high prices for what the
  federal government needed)

36
Organized Civilian labor

• New job opportunities
• half million African Americans
• half million southern whites
• migrated from tenant farms and share cropping to
  industrial centers such as Chicago and Detroit.
• Hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants (1910
  revolution)
• 40,000 women

37
Black Migration

• industrial northern cities doubling and tripling
  the black population there
• fearful and resentful whites began race riots,
  In east St Louis, IL,
• a white mob murdered at least 39 people in
• July 1917.

38
Gains in Labor Unions

• Demand of labor
• Success of labor unions (1916-1920)
• Membership doubled
• Wages rose 137
• work week decreased to 48 hours.
• Industrial democracy
• War for democracy in Europe, why not at home.

39
The Draft

• Senator James Wadsworth of New York suggested it
  to avert the danger of class struggle and
  movements for social change
• that these people should be divided by classwe
  must let our young men know that they owe some
  responsibility.

40
Military Labor

• Selective Service Act passed 1917
•  
• 24 million men registered
• 3 million were drafted
• 2 million volunteered
• 18 were foreign born
• 10 African American

41
Socialist Challenge

• Despite Wilsons words of the war to end all
  wars and to make the world safe for democracy
  Americans did not rush to enlist and congress
  voted for a draft.
• The socialist party declared the war a crime
  against the people of the United States

42
Socialist party Gains

• 1917 up to 20,000 farmers protested the war, the
  draft and profiteering.
• It began to gain in strength rapidly.
• Politically in municipal elections of 1917
  socialists made gains.

43
Segregation, Discrimination, IQ

• Scientific Racism continued
• Eugenics
• 1905 Pennsylvania
• 1970s African American 500,000
• Native American 25,000
• Military
• 10 were African American
• Segregated and barred from combat
• Justified by IQ test
• Non-whites not as endowed mentally
• Half the troops-morons, with a mental capacity of
  13

44
NAACP- Concessions

• Pressured military to allow African Americans
  combat positions
• 369th infantry
• Croix de Guerre by French government length and
  distinction of service

45
Who paid for the war?

• Government borrowed money and raised taxes
• Corporations paid 1/3 in taxes
• Richest charged a 67 income tax, and a 25
  inheritance tax
• Liberty Bonds
• government effort, patriotic duty to purchase
  them treasury bond campaign
• Every Person who refuses to subscribe is a
  friend of Germany

46
Committee on Public Information

• 1917 Wilson - CPI
• George Creel
• Goal fight for the minds of men, for the
  conquest of heir convictions
• publicize and popularize the war
• unprecedented propaganda campaign
• to make the world safe for democracy
• Self-determination of Nations

47
Renewed Protest

• Demanding U.S. live up to its ideals at home
• Industrial democracy
• Womens suffrage
• Deliverance of African Americans from second
  class citizenship
• Ethnic groups opportunity for success

48
Suppressing Dissent

• Espionage Act
• Heavy fines and 20 years in prison in obstructing
  the war effort
• Sedition Act 1918
• based on state laws designed to suppress labor
  radicals
• severe penalties for speaking or writing against
  the draft, bond sales, or war production or for
  criticizing government personnel or policies

49
Political repression and Ultra Patriotism

• Senator Hiram Johnson lamented
• It is war. But good God,when did it become war
  upon the American people?
• Eugene Debs
• it is extremely dangerous to exercise the right
  of free speech in a country fighting to make
  democracy safe in the world

50
1918 CPI campaign

•  State and Local authorities
• 184,000 investigating and enforcement agencies
  known as Councils of Defense or Public Safety
  Committees
• Inflammatory advertisements called on patriots to
  call on their neighbors and ethnics they
  suspected of subverting the war effort
• Propagandists 100 American
• Repudiate all ties to homeland, language and
  customs.

51
German Americans

• Aroused hostility spreading lurid tails of German
  atrocities
• Justice department arrested thousands of German
  and Austrian immigrants suspected of subversive
  activities

52
Anti-German Campaign

• German Americans objects of popular hatred
• German banned
• Music
• books burned
• teaching of German language
• German Americans risked being fired, losing
  businesses and assault on the streets
• Some lynched - defended as an act of patriotism
• Began hiding ethnic identity and changed names

53
"Where he can be kept out of mischief?"In a
November 1917 cartoon, Des Moines Register
cartoonist J.N. "Ding" Darling illustrated the
fear that German immigrants to the United States
would support Germany in World War I, reinforcing
the belief that German-Americans could not be
trusted.
54
Immigration Restriction Act

• Escalated into Anti-immigrant campaign
•   Immigration Restriction Act of 1917
• denied entry to US to adults who failed the
  reading test
• Banned immigration of laborers from India,
  Indochina, Afghanistan, Arabia and East Indies.

55
Repression

• Wilsons administration relied on repression more
  and more to achieve domestic unity
•  Espionage, Sabotage and Sedition acts passed in
  1917 and 1918
• Sweeping power to silence dissenters
• Prosecuted for writing or uttering any statement
  that could be construed as profaning the flag,
  constitution or military

56
Banning and Persecution of Socialists

• Repressed and banned socialist meetings in the
  US
•    Businessmen used rhetoric to suppress labor
  movements

57
Anti-radical Crusades

• Super charged patriotism
• Encouraged local governments and private citizens
  to initiate anti-radical crusades
•  Bisbee, AZ, Kidnapping 1,200 IWW members, New
  Mexican Desert
• Butte, MN, chained a IWW organizer to a car,
  drove through city streets, castrated

58
American Protective League

• The Return of Vigilantism
• Attorney General Thomas Gregory
• American Protective League
• 250,000 members spied on workers and neighbors
• Domestic Spying and surveillance
• Opened mail, Tapped phones
• Harassed those suspected of disloyalty
• Federally supported and endorsed